Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins’s office leads the nation in wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing. Since 2001, DNA tests have exonerated 31 people in Texas, 17 of them in Dallas County.

Texas has, to date, paid compensation in 45 wrongful conviction cases, at least 22 of them involving prosecutors who withheld evidence from the defense.

Watkins wants prosecutors who intentionally withhold evidence and put the innocent in jail to pay for their actions. “If the harm is a great harm, yes, it should be criminalized,” Watkins has said.

Watkins isn’t the only one in Texas pushing to criminalize such behavior. The Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit legal clinic, is making plans to push for such a law during the next legislative session in January.

Michelle Moore, a board member of the Innocence Project and a Dallas County public defender, worries the chance of success is “slim to none.” But the issue is gaining publicity, and pressure to punish prosecutors whose misbehavior causes wrongful convictions, may grow, forcing action.

In June, 2007, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar for breaking the rules of professional conduct while handling the now infamous rape allegations against three Duke University lacrosse players. The case sparked a nationwide discussion about ethics in the American justice system.

James Curtis Giles, who was wrongly convicted in a 1982 gang rape when the victim incorrectly picked him from a photo lineup and prosecutors withheld the confession of a codefendant, said Watkins’ harsh sanctions make sense. “A crime is a crime,” he said. “We’ve got to set an example—prison time or barred from practicing law.”

In October, 2007 the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, conducted a panel discussion on prosecutorial misconduct, “examining its frequency at the state and federal levels, the circumstances under which it is most likely to occur, and strategies to minimize its impact,” according to the Web site.

In 1998, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote a 10-part series called “Win at all costs,” about the problem of federal agents and prosecutors who “have pursued justice by breaking the law.” According to the series, a two-year investigation reveled that they “lied, hid evidence, distorted facts, engaged in cover-ups, paid for perjury and set up innocent people in a relentless effort to win indictments, guilty pleas and convictions,” and rarely were they punished, or admitted that their conduct was wrong.

Truth in Justice, an educational nonprofit dedicated to revealing “vulnerabilities in the U.S. criminal justice system” provides a list of wrongful conviction cases on its Web site. The cases are listed individually with links to media coverage.

In March, 2006, following an off-campus party for lacrosse players, an exotic dancer claimed three men at the party had raped her. What followed was a messy legal case that drew national attention for its race issues (the dancer was black, the three lacrosse players, white) as Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong’s unprofessional conduct in representing the dancer. The rape charges were eventually dropped. The Christian Science Monitor provides a through rundown of the case.

The fact that wrongful convictions happen more in Texas than in any other state means Texas is in dire need of an “innocence commission” with strong executive powers immediately, argues a Houston Chronicle editorial. The Chronicle says “it would make eminent sense to promptly create a commission with a broad mandate to detect and prevent innocent people from being punished.”

The Dallas News ran a similar editorial, emphasizing the need for an innocence commission while highlighting the cases of several individuals who recently stood before the state Senate to tell of how they were wrongly convicted: “Some told their stories with passion and resolve, others with sadness. The facts chill to the bone.”

The Innocence Project of Texas is “dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions and securing freedom for men and women wrongfully imprisoned for serious crimes in the State of Texas,” according to the group’s Web site. The site features profiles of individuals who were wrongfully convicted and served many years in prison before being exonerated.